Ben Shapiro writes at National Review Online about one of the more disturbing aspects of President Obama’s efforts to transform America.

Obama has been the most divisive president in modern history. But he’s done more than that: He’s destroyed all the institutions we hold in common, hoping that, by doing so, we will grant him more power.

America relies on our social capital: the notion that we can trust each other because we share things in common. De Tocqueville wrote of America’s stunning reservoirs of social capital: “Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations,” he wrote. Those associations are “not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types — religious, moral, serious, futile, very general, very limited, immensely large and very minute.”

Forming such associations requires us to share values, generally.

If you wish to destroy social capital, however, you begin by destroying the credibility of institutions and associations.

That is precisely what Obama has done.

In June 2009, 48 percent of Americans said they had a great deal or quite a lot of trust in organized religion. Today, that number is 41 percent. Trust in the military has dropped from 82 percent to 73 percent; trust in Congress has dipped from 17 to 9 percent; under Obama, trust in the police dropped to its lowest point since 1993 before rebounding slightly in June 2016; trust in the criminal-justice system collapsed from 28 to 23 percent.

Even trust in the presidency has dropped, from 51 to 36 percent.

Yet Obama personally floats blithely along in the polls — even though 68 percent of Americans say we’re on the “wrong track.” According to Gallup, Obama’s back up to a 51 percent approval rating; according to ABC News, he’s at 56 percent.